A grainy scanned black-and-white photocollage.
Its source was my all-time favourite Depeche Mode magazine cover.
December 5, 1984 issue of Smash
Hits, the band at the peak of their industrial phase and the brink of
international success, and Martin Gore at the height of his aggressive
androgyny.
This cover has such huge
ambiguous charm because it's very gender-fuck. MLG’s body speaks both ways: his
hips and shoulders arch in a purely feminine manner but his hands, thumbs in
pockets, are pointing at the crotch area in a traditional male sign of
self-assurance and sexual innuendo. But those pockets are on a skirt, so it's
very confusing. You never see him resort to feminine sensibilities only, it’s
always a combination of both genders’ signs, a stunning, itching unisexuality,
leather and lace, metal and make-up.
Many of those who saw the 80s
with their own eyes and those who only heard about those colourful years, diss
that decade for its ridiculous haircuts and extravagant clothes, but I love
that era. The Mode had one of their most striking looks back in the mid-80s,
and I sincerely wish Martin Gore hadn't given up his mid-80s “transvestite”
fetish so soon.
In fact, seeing this picture of him with big bleached blond hair and a string of pearly beads was nothing short of a culture shock, a
positive one.
I discovered the band in 1997,
when their “perv” image was no longer there. Russian music press never featured
these ambiguous mid-80s photos in articles on DM, so it was only through the
Internet that I got to know how flamboyant they used to be.
